On Media

Reporters condemn Senate vote

The Capitol Hill press corps is strongly condemning how the Senate handled a critical roll call vote on raising the debt ceiling Wednesday.

During a highly dramatic vote, the Senate clerk remained silent as senators submitted their votes to lift the debt limit into March 2015, a serious departure from normal procedure. Typically senators’ positions are announced as they vote, allowing C-SPAN viewers and those in the Senate gallery to tabulate the vote as lawmakers give an often subtle thumbs-up or thumbs-down to indicate their “yea” or “nay” vote.

That didn’t happen on Wednesday, when an hour-long vote to break the bill’s filibuster by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) left members of the press scratching their heads, exchanging notes and craning down at the official tally on the Senate floor to try to figure out how many Republicans were supporting the measure.

Ultimately, the filibuster was broken 67-31 as much of the GOP leadership team voted to advance the bill and convinced several rank-and-file Republicans to do the same. But until the final tally was read, reporters on tight deadlines were in the dark -- and remained so for several minutes thereafter as delivery of the official roll call tally to the press gallery was delayed. The Senate does not use electronic voting like the House does.

The opaque proceedings prompted strong protests from the media’s governing bodies on Capitol Hill and demands for answers. NBC reporter Frank Thorp V, who chairs the Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association executive committee, called the clerk’s silence a “breach of decades of protocol.”

BNA reporter Heather Rothman, who chairs the executive committee of the Senate Periodical Press Gallery, said the event “raised serious questions about the Senate’s commitment to transparency during floor action and the recording of votes.” Siobhan Hughes of the Wall Street Journal, who chairs the Senate Press Gallery’s standing committee of correspondents, said her organization is “extremely concerned.”

“When the vote tallies are not read aloud, it makes it harder for the media and therefore the public to get the information they need to hold lawmakers accountable,” Hughes said.

Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said that the clerk’s silence was requested “to make it easier for Republican leaders to convince their members to switch their votes.” Jentleson said Reid consented to the request and that the majority leader was ultimately focused on avoiding a credit default.

"Senator Reid takes transparency very seriously and is aware of the legitimate concerns that have been raised. Senator Reid values the opinions of the professional members of the media who work hard every day to keep the public informed, and has instructed his staff to work with members of the media and the relevant organizations to get their full input on this issue and seek to address any concerns,” Jentleson said.

Associated Press reporter Andrew Taylor began highlighting the issue on Wednesday night, launching into a lengthy critique on Twitter by noting that investors too were being stiffed on critical information during the debt limit vote, which was held while the markets were open.

“If Reid or [Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell conspire again to hide live vote tallies from the public, I assure you that the press will call them out,” Taylor tweeted. “As it happened, the media was so excited to have something interesting to watch it forgot that [it] was getting screwed. Never again.”